Joe Biden has always been there laying in the weeds, waiting for something to happen that might derail Hillary. Apparently, he thinks the time is now. [More....]

His time is long gone. He will be 74 years old in November, 2016. Richard Nixon was President when he got to the Senate.(Nixon resigned in 1974.)

While the Senate has had older Senators, they are 1 of 100. There's only 1 President. Ronald Reagan, the oldestPresident to be inaugurated, was 73 when was sworn in for his second term. Biden will be three years older. Even should he be elected, he'd almost certainly be a one term President. He'd turn 84 before his second term was up, and no one wants a President in his 80's.

His age is the easiest reason to overlook him. The real reason is his record on crime.

I have consistently opposed Crime Warrior In Chief Joe Biden on this site since 2003. (All posts are accumulated here.) Pick any drug law you don't like in the last 25 years, and you'll find he's responsible. If he runs, it will be the first time I sit out a presidential election. He will never get my vote.

The sheer number and extent of Biden's fibs, distortions, and plagiarisms struck many observers at the time as worrisome, to say the least. While a media feeding frenzy (a term popularized in the 1988 campaign) always creates an unseemly air of hysteria, Biden deserved the scrutiny he received. Quitting the race was the right thing to do.

Even in 2012, he hadn't changed his overly pro-law enforcement and drug warrior views. In Mexico, he said the Obama-Biden Administration would never legalize drugs and are requesting more money for the war on drugs in Central America:

Biden said the U.S. has provided about $361 million in anti-crime aid under the Central America Regional Security Initiative, but leaders in the region called that insufficient. Biden said the administration is asking more from congress.

Biden could care less about pleasing progressives. It's the Republican vote he'll pander to. He acknowledged this strategy in 2008.

The only crime bill we need now is a three strikes law that keeps Joe Biden from running for President for the third time.

Joe Biden has always been there laying in the weeds, waiting for something to happen that might derail Hillary. Apparently, he thinks the time is now.

In my opinion, Hillary is well on the way to derailing herself.
And I'm not talking about emails.

I was truly amazed at the way she avoided giving a straight answer about her position on Keystone.

We are left to surmise what she would actually do when elected.
We gave Obama a major benefit of the doubt - believing he would be a progressive and watching as he lamely surrendered time after time to interest groups on the right.

Would we do that again? Hoping that Hillary will be the Hillary we want her to be? To be the progressive champion we think that she may be in her heart of hearts?

Don't think so.

My fear is that if we don't do something soon, we will wind up with one of those freaks of nature on the Republican side.

Or Biden.

Of course Biden is unacceptable. His age doesn't concern me much. It is his draconian approach to "law enforcement" that would make me stay away from the polls.

What has happened to our party? The Democratic Party.
Are there no Democrats left?

I did not get the impression that she really wanted us to know how she really feels about it.

And if she had any inkling that Obama was going to veto it, she gave no indication of it.

But - fact is - as you said, she had just made a speech about her "comprehensive" "progressive" Climate policy. So this was a wrong time to waffle about something that is symbolic for many of us of our forward march into the abyss.

I, rightly or wrongly, am left with the impression that she doesn't really stand for anything.

I think you don't want to see what you don't want to see, much like people saw so much in Obama that wasn't really there, projecting onto a chameleon their expectations for action. Which didn't happen.

I wonder if you watched or listened to Clinton slam Jeb Bush on Friday, and if you're still able to say she stands for nothing.

But, I remain unconvinced about what she might actually do to help people in economic distress.

She was more attacking Bush's record in Florida than putting forth her proposals to improve the lot of disadvantaged Americans.

I'm not sure that it's fair to say that I don't see what I don't want to see with respect to Clinton.
I simply remain unmoved by her utterances - every one of which seems like a calculation rather than an expression of passion or conviction.

It is, admittedly, subjective.
I am actually eager to be moved, believe it or not. But I can't help feel what I feel.

The fact remains that people lurking in the wings - like Biden - are slithering out due to the fact that they sense that people are not truly enraptured by Clinton - and might be looking for an alternative.

I think I am now old enough and cynical enough to think that the desire to be moved, perhaps best seen as our every-4-years wave of idealism, is not only not useful in today's reality but can be harmful, As of course it will be exploited by the right. (Not that the right doesn't have their own idealists!....)

My youngest nephew is in love with Sanders on that same wave of idealism, and of course I love that he's involved and passionate. He's a great kid with a big heart. I wonder if 16 years ago had he been old enough he would have gone for Nader....and whether he understands now, that a convergence of events allowed Bush to get in over Gore, in part due to the Nader idealism.....and could there be any two more divergent alternate paths in our lifetimes than a Gore presidency v the tragedy of the Bush years?

He's young enough that climate change may devastatingly affect him in his lifetime, certainly his kids.

disagree with you about Nader idealism being responsible in any shape of form for the defeat of Gore.

Nader repeatedly said that all Gore had to do was adopt some of the positions that are so appealing to his (Nader's) voters.

In addition, Gore chose a truly reprehensible war-mongering nothing as his running mate - whose main credential was that he had condemned Clinton in the Senate Chamber.

In addition, there were the shenanigans of Katherine Harris in Florida - combined with a corrupt Supreme Court - voting on a purely partisan basis to essentially promote a coup d'état.

To top it off, Gore couldn't even win his home State.

But - honestly - what I meant by "being moved" was not to infer the wide-eyed dreaming to which the Obama people succumbed. I simply meant a sensation that one feels when one senses that one is being addressed honestly. Doesn't seem like much to ask.

It is not an indulgence, imo. It is the only way we have of sensing whether someone is trustworthy.

I sense, perhaps incorrectly, that you are for Hillary because the alternatives are unthinkable.

I can certainly agree with that assessment of the alternatives.

But my point is that I think her campaign is flagging - and that's why Biden's name is being floated. Another unthinkable alternative.

Mostly I'd say the depth and detail of her domestic/economic and climate policies, honest acknowledgment of race issues, coupled with the ability to fight the GOP, and also to form and use alliances in Congress on both sides of the aisle. I've always felt Obama's aloofness cost him there.

I see little of that in Sanders, certainly not to the extent that Clinton has.

I won't dredge up too much of the past, but I never heard that criticism for Kerry in his run in 2004, and never heard it re Edwards as it was used v Clinton in the 2008 campaign.

I always felt that was a barometer for the CDS. Clinton was criticized when no one else was.

And that's not even going into the discussion of the deception in the run up to the vote. They were all deceived. Should they have know better? Yes, I think so. But the message came from Colin Powell, seemingly an ip unimpeachable source.

An enormous betrayal of the truth, IMO, at the cost of untold number of lives.

Powell is going to hell and I believe he knows it.

But so much of the virile was directed only at Clinton, when so many bought the lie.

To me. He had a stance similar to my husbands. Until our leadership got us out of Iraq those that really cared and those who possessed ethics had to serve there in order to do what they could to deter the next set of choices that would lead to war crimes.

It comforted me that a DC family was sharing our worries.

If Beau wanted Joe to run, I think Joe needs to it to honor the servants heart that Beau possessed. I don't think he'll beat Clinton. That's a different story.

Obama will endorse Hillary. If he does IMO it won't be because he thinks he has a chance it will be a last cry for attention before sinking into obscurity. I like Joe. I never understood him as VP for Obama but it seemed to work for its purposes.. I don't see him as a threat. It will be interesting to see if he attacks Hillary. Hard to believe even he would be clueless enough to do that.

does, once again, a pretty decent job of calling out the NYTimes on "the screw-up." --a quote from Dean Bacque, executive editor. After citing readers' and other commenters criticisms of the NYT stories, she summarizes by agreeing with one reader who believes that the NYTimes should make "a promise to readers going forward that Hillary is not going to be treated unfairly as she so often is by the media." And, passed it on to Bacquet. (who was defensive).

However, Ms. Sullivan, herself, misses a key point, one she refers to from her blog of earlier last week. She faults the Times story and points out the big error: After all the mistakes and revisions, including that little mistake of no criminal inquiry and, not one directed at Mrs. Clinton, she claims the story was no longer "jaw dropping," but still newsworthy. Really? A front page story on bureaucratic disputes on decisions related to Freedom of Information releases?

Ms. Sullivan's admonition to Mr. Baquet for fairness and her call "for reporters and their editors to be doubly vigilant and doubly cautious," failed the test in another part of the very same edition.

Maureen Dowd, who has never applied any principles of fairness to Mrs. Clinton, out-did herself in Sunday's column--a rambling, mixed up and mismatched analysis of people and events.

Entitled "What Would Beau Do? as a macabre endorsement of Joe, a deflategate association between Tom Brady and Hillary Clinton, Quinniipiac polls, Jeb and Bernie, the concerns of "some" Democrats, Donald Trump,'s ego, and Howard Schultz, the coffee titan who is being urged to run for president by "potent friends." My review may seem jumbled, but if you read the column, I believe you will find my take to be a model in coherency.

the more they embarrass themselves. They clearly have a stick up the stick they have in their rear end about Clinton, and their credibility will suffer as this becomes more apparent the rest of this year and onward into November 2016.

Sure, in 2015, in a different political environment and with the benefit of being able to see the impact of policies the Clinton Administration championed in the 1990s, she has changed her tune somewhat.

Would Biden somehow be less worthy of consideration if he did the same thing?

the past positions of Hillary Rodham Clinton on criminal justice issues, as opposed to those of "the [William Jefferson] Clinton Administration" of the 1990s (in which she held no position)? When she was a U.S. Senator, perhaps, or possibly while she was Secretary of State?

"We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The three strikes and you're out for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets."

the examples are numerous over her entire career until rather recently. she was pro- mandatory minimums; pro 3 strikes; pro conditioning federal money on states enacting tougher sentencing provisions; pro-death penalty.

one of the justifiable knocks on Clinton is her coziness with the finance sector. Well if she is cozy, Biden has been married to has them for his entire political career.

Unsuprisingly he became the champion of the Credit Card industry in the Senate.

The senator was a key supporter of an industry-favorite bill--the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005"--that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.

Two thumbs down on Biden, do the country and the party a favor and stay out of it Joe

Take a look at the energy Bernie has and why, he must see that his history will sink him. I see other Dem leaders discouraging his run today, saying if he was going to do this he needed to have started last year. Anyone who would be his donor is now with Clinton.

I welcome him to the race, if he is in. Biden helped Obama with the Rust Belt voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania. Remember, Obama was having a hard time with Rust Belt voters. Biden can reach into Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan.